


Terpsichore

by lettersfromnowhere



Series: Birthday Requests [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Birthday Oneshot Request, Dancing, Domestic Fluff, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:01:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27428320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettersfromnowhere/pseuds/lettersfromnowhere
Summary: "It goes like this."This love has always been a little bit like a dance.
Relationships: Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Birthday Requests [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2003899
Comments: 12
Kudos: 87





	Terpsichore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shxpwrecked](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shxpwrecked/gifts).



> A birthday oneshot request for @shxpwrecked. Happy birthday!

“It goes like this.”

Wordlessly, in the dim candlelight, he repeats the steps, and she tries to follow along. She laughs when she stumbles, and he catches her; she makes no move to right herself. Her arms, once set elegantly against his waist and shoulder, fall to his waist, and she holds him close, breathing in the scent of him. His hands bunch the fabric of the practice tunic she’s taken to wearing to bed, stolen from him and worn soft, before he lets her go.

“No, like _this,”_ Zuko says, repeating the steps. Katara’s a little more confident, this time, but she still pulls a face at him when they finish the sequence.  
  
“Why do we even need to know this?” she huffs, crossing her arms.

“You signed up for this, Katara,” he teases, pulling her back in with gentle hands at her waist. “Now, like _this…”_

* * *

_It goes like this: a boy with lightning in his veins and a girl – no, a force of nature – determined to see him. Day and night she sits peevishly outside his door, waiting to be admitted; the palace doctors rarely let her in, but she must be vigilant, always ready when they do. Her brother and friends bring her meals sometimes, beg her to come get some rest, but she protests that she does not need it._

_  
In truth, she sleeps with her back to Zuko’s door so that if anyone tries to open it in the night, she will immediately be awakened._

_She’s slipped in four times that way, using the exit of a servant who left to fetch a glass of water or the doctor to make her way into Zuko’s bedchamber. He is always awake, somehow, when she does, and he smiles weakly when he sees her approach._

_“I’m here,” she murmurs, though she suspects that she wants to be here more than he truly needs her, and presses her hand to his chest. He places his hand atop hers, and they stay that way for a moment. She feels the rise and fall of his breathing, invariably tells him that he is a reckless fool, and unsheaths her waterskin to give him what comfort she can._

_It goes like this: it is on the fifth such visit that Katara realizes that she loves this reckless, selfless fool._

* * *

“Okay, the next part goes like this.”

Zuko straightens his back and shows her the next set of steps. He explains how they must circle each other, weaving around one another in a sequence of intricate footwork before rejoining. He laughs softly when Katara groans at the prospect, lifts her chin for a quick, encouraging kiss.

“I have absolute faith in you, my darling,” he says, in higher spirits than he’s been in for months, and that alone is enough to make Katara want to get this right.

She asks him to do it again, and this time, she holds up a candle so she can watch his footsteps. She repeats the request, again and again, to memorize the way she must move – to memorize the way _he_ moves, his muscles loose and his movements practiced and languid all at once – before she tries it again.

If she must master these fussy Fire Nation dances, she figures she ought to be able to admire him as she learns. Far be it from Katara to deny that her husband is rather pleasing to the eye. Zuko catches her staring mid-step and circles back around, taking her waist again – gently, always gently – and pulling her back into hold. “Distracted?” he asks, and, childish as she knows it is, Katara sticks out her tongue.

“Since when are you so sassy?” she fires back, though this time, she _almost_ performs the steps recognizably.

* * *

_It goes like this: it takes two stupid years for Katara and Zuko to meet again._

_It’s at a diplomatic function, of all things. Katara’s already ecstatic at having been chosen to attend; now that she’s sixteen, she’s old enough to represent the Southern Water Tribe at an event like this, and though she won’t be eligible for a full ambassadorship until she’s eighteen, this is exactly the start she needs. She’s amazed that she manages to sit still through hours of preparation, letting a seamstress prod her with pins until her dress is finished and then, the night of the summit’s opening, allowing a covey of maids to dress her hair. But she does, and though no official diplomacy will be performed tonight, she’s nonetheless excited: these opening banquets, she knows from Zuko’s letters, are when the connections are made._

_She knows by now that connections are important._

_So when she enters the banquet hall, she lets the callous stares of the old men mystified by the choice of a teenage girl for a representative bounce off of her. She’ll have time to convince them later, and she cannot help but let her eyes wander to the head of the table. She and Zuko won’t be seated near each other: rank and seniority determine seating. He’s the Fire Lord, and she is just about the most junior envoy present. He sits at the head of the table, she very nearly at the foot._

_But his eyes do not leave her for a moment._

_Later that night, when she has a chance to approach him, he is so stiff and awkward when he asks her for a dance that he looks like he might cry, and Katara lays a reassuring hand on his arm. His eyes flick to her hand, then her face, then her hand again, and he blushes profusely._

_“Of course,” she says, and his shoulders slump with what seems to be relief before they straighten again. “I don’t know the dance, but I’ll try.”_

_“It’s not complicated,” he reassures her._

_It goes like this: Katara doesn’t sleep for hours that night, the memory of that dance playing and replaying in her mind long into the earliest hours of the morning._

* * *

“Then it goes like this.” Zuko smiles down at her. “This part’s easy.”

Their wrists are crossed, and he turns his wrist to take her hand. Then he raises his own, and she does not need to be told to twirl under it. Her loose hair fans out around her as she spins,t hen comes to a stop in front of Zuko. He drops his hand and places it at the small of her back to pull her back in and she trips forward, grabbing fistfuls of his tunic to steady herself.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “That was probably too sudden.”

“I like this step,” Katara giggles into his shirt. “It’s easy.”

  
“Katara, you just fell on me.”

She smacks his arm, face still buried in his tunic. “’Cause _you_ messed up!” she protests. “For once, it wasn’t even my fault.”

“Fine,” Zuko mutters. “Again?”

She nods, then straightens.  
  


This time, when Zuko pulls her back in, he meets her eyes with the softest of smiles and a quick, teasing peck to her lips. “Good,” he says. “You’re getting the hang of this.”

* * *

_It goes like this: she arrives in the Fire Nation for her appointment ceremony the day after she turns eighteen._

_  
She’s been waiting years for this, but nervousness claws at her stomach like it didn’t before, when she was a regular representative at diplomatic events but had no official position. Zuko has told her what to expect of her position, but she’s apprehensive even so. She knows what those with more power than she think of her rise through the ranks, and she does not think that their opinions of her are going to improve now that she’s on politically equal footing with most of them. Even so, this is what she knows she has to do, and she’s not going to let anything stop her from doing anything she can to help her people._

_So, though her hands shake through the ceremony, and her voice wobbles and threatens to break as she takes her oath to serve the Southern Water Tribe with integrity and to uphold the law of the Fire Nation while she works within its borders, Katara does not let her nerves show. Generally, she does a good job of it, but there is no concealing the relief that floods her face when the ceremony is over._

_It doesn’t last._

_“Congratulations, Ambassador.”_

_  
Katara turns and her cheeks flush at the sound of the speaker’s voice. “Fire Lord Zuko,” she stammers, dropping into a formal bow because it’s hard to know how familiar she can be with him at any given time. Right now, she’s fairly certain that he is not her friend, but her employer, so she opts for the most formal greeting she can muster._

_The obvious confusion on Zuko’s face makes her wonder if she did something wrong._

_“You okay?” he asks, tilting his head quizzically. The open concern on his face melts her heart and her cheeks flush an even brighter shade of red._

_“Yeah, I just…don’t want to be presumptuous,” she admits, dropping her eyes to the floor._

_“You’re my friend, Katara. Don’t worry about that.” Zuko offers his arm. “Walk with me?”_

_She nods. “What for?”_

_“I haven’t seen you in months, Katara,” he says, trying so hard to keep his tone even that it wobbles. “Is it not enough that I missed you?”_

_“Oh.” She bites her lip nervously. “You missed me?”_

_He nods. “All the time.”_

_“I missed you, too,” she admits as he rounds the corner into a deserted corridor. “But…where are we going?”_

_“Somewhere to catch up, away from the crowds.” He looks worried again. “Unless…you’re not comfortable with that? I mean, being alone with me?”_

_“Friends, remember?” she gently pokes his side and laughs at his indignant yelp. “I trust you.”_

_“Okay.” He stops in the middle of the hall and drops her arm, only to take her hand instead. He takes the other soon after and stands in front of her, not quite looking her in the eye. “I, um. I just wanted to tell you that, um. I’m looking forward to working with you.”_

_“Me too,” she says haltingly, wondering why he was so nervous to make such a generic remark. “But…are you all right? You seem so nervous.” She squeezes his hands. “I don’t bite, Zuko.”_

_His eyes widen for a moment, then he closes them, inhaling deeply. “Sorry. Sorry. This is…embarrassing.”_

_“What is?”_

_He cautiously opens his good eye again, peering at her as if he’s not sure if it’s safe to look. “Um. How badly I want to kiss you right now.”_

_Now it’s Katara’s eyes that widen, and before she can think better of it, she blurts out, “well, why didn’t you lead with that?”_

_“You’re not mad?”_

_“Spirits, no, Zuko. Why would that make me mad?”_

_  
“Because you, um, don’t…want that?”_

_She lightly smacks his shoulder. “Of course I want to kiss you.” It’s easy to hide her racing heart behind a put-out expression, so she keeps it on. “Idiot.”_

_“Oh?”_

_“Oh, come on, you can’t just say something like that and then not kiss me!”_

_It goes like this: their first kiss is clumsy and awkward and their teeth knock together on the first attempt. There is nothing romantic about it; really, the fact that it happened at all is shocking._

_(The second is a vast improvement.)_

* * *

“And after that, it goes like this.” Zuko pauses to consider something. “Wait, actually, the man just…stands there during this part. You have to do all the work.”

“Ugh.” Katara picks at her nails disinterestedly, though Zuko knows she’s enjoying this. “Of course I get the short end of the stick.” 

“I can try to demonstrate the woman’s part, but I don’t know how it’s going to go,” he warns her. She nods for him to proceed, though, and laughs profusely when he stumbles over his feet.

“You’re cute when you can’t dance.” Sitting on the edge of their bed, Katara tugs him down into a kiss. “I ever tell you that?”

“Are you trying to distract me?” he asks after she pulls away, fingers still tangled in the fabric of his shirt.

“Depends. Are you distracted?” She arches an eyebrow.

“You’re not getting out of this one, Katara.”

She pulls him into another kiss. “No, but it was a good effort.”

* * *

_It goes like this: Zuko spends half of what was supposed to be an exceedingly romantic outing fishing a betrothal necklace out of the turtleduck pond._

_It takes several years for any of Zuko’s fussier officials to be convinced that his relationship with the Southern Water Tribe’s ambassador is more than a passing fling, but the upside of that early opposition is a decided lack thereof by the time the two were old enough and certain enough to look to the future. Everyone assumes, after five years and many, many stories from servants who’ve found them stealing kisses in pantries and closets and deserted gardens, that they’ll announce their engagement in the near future. Zuko and Katara know this as well as anyone: they’ve discussed it at length and they know where they stand._

_That doesn’t mean, though, that Zuko isn’t going to make the making-it-official as romantic as possible._

_“Can you waterbend it out?” he asks anxiously, peering over the railing of the bridge. It’s more of a footpath over the turtleduck pond, and the pond itself isn’t more than two feet deep, but it’s murky and overgrown with algae and Zuko would really not have to climb in. He’s already had to strip two layers of his robes to reach for it, and he’s no closer to finding the necklace that he’d – oh so predictably – dropped through the slats between planks the moment he’d pulled it out of his pocket._

_“I could if I could see it,” Katara says, squinting to get a better look. “But the water is so dark. Let me see if I can get it to float to the surface.”_

_The few turtleducks who didn’t scramble to safety the moment the necklace fell squawk in irritation as Katara stirs up the water, hoping the necklace will float to the surface so she can retrieve it. After a few moments, it finally appears, and she bends an orb of water around it and into her hands._

_Naturally –_ naturally – _the orb loses its shape and drops onto Zuko’s feet as she holds it out to him._

_“Well, that went great.” Zuko examines the soaked blue ribbon and frowns. “I’m sorry. That was supposed to be-“_

_“Yes,” Katara interrupts him. Now that they’ve solved the crisis of the lost necklace, the weight of its meaning sinks in. “Yes.”_

_“I haven’t even asked you yet,” Zuko protests._

_She throws her arms around him. “Yes, yes,_ yes,” _she insists, and she kisses him before he can get a word in edgewise._

_The moment she pulls back, she bends the water off of the necklace – and Zuko’s boots – with a flick of her wrist._

* * *

“I don’t think it goes like that.”

When Katara doesn’t respond, Zuko tries again. “That…does not look like I remembered it.” He squints as Katara tries to imitate his own shaky approximation of the woman’s part of this dance, one he’s only seen performed. He’d always avoided partnered dances; now that he’s married, he doesn’t have an excuse to keep that up, but he’s finding that his avoidance has left him woefully ill-informed.

“Well, I don’t even think _you_ know what you’re doing, so I’m not sure how you’d know that,” Katara points out.

  
“You’re probably right.” He sighs. “We’ll just ask the etiquette instructor tomorrow.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Katara immediately brightens at the permission to stop practicing. “What’s next?”

There’s nothing more to learn, since the dance repeats after that, but Zuko isn’t quite ready to be done yet.

“Just this,” he murmurs, pulling her close.

* * *

_It goes like this: they both cry on their wedding day._

_  
Neither can quite say why. Maybe it’s loss, and maybe their tears are for the people who aren’t in attendance. Maybe it’s the overwhelming prospect of ruling a country together. Maybe it’s relief, or joy, or a mix of all of those things._

_All that is certain is this:_

_By the end of the night, when they are finally allowed to retreat to their chambers, they feel too much to do anything but cry in each other’s arms. They don’t even shed their cumbersome wedding clothes before they collapse against the bedspread, and Katara buries her face in Zuko’s robes to hide her tears as his hit the back of her gown._

_  
Perhaps it’s a much-needed release._

* * *

“Is this how it goes?”

  
“No.” Zuko sways on his feet, staying in place so that he won’t trip over the furniture. “Is that okay?”

Katara braces her arms against his shoulders, pressing her cheek to his tunic. “Mm-hm.”

  
Neither knows when the candle goes out, but shortly before that, Katara starts to hum. It’s an unfamiliar tune – Water Tribe, probably, Zuko figures – but music is music, and they dance. There is no finesse to this dance; it’s not one they’ve practiced, nor one with steps anyone could teach them. It’s really not much of a dance at all, as they sway in each other’s arms. Dancing is dancing, but this one feels worlds away from the last.

It goes like this: he holds her tight in the quiet of their chambers, and she sinks into him.

It goes like this: she wears his tunic, and he breathes in the scent of her covering what used to be his.

He twirls her under his arm after a moment, and she laughs into the kiss that she presses to his lips when he pulls her back in. It is so hard not to smile when she is with him and he relishes that. The candle flickers low, and again, she laughs, letting go of him to rise on her toes and kiss him again, this time long and soft and sweet, and he steadies her, his hand at her waist.

It goes like this, because their love, after all, has always been a little bit like a dance. 


End file.
